Saturday, November 19, 2011

Blogathon: Craig Brown revisited

Midnight. Halfway through. Normal people might be thinking about bed. Or working up to cutting some moves. Or getting enough drink in them to make a mistimed, ill-judged and futile pass at someone they've spotted across the bar.

And I'm gearing up for a night of football chat. If you've been out, got back and have some change kicking about in your pockets it would be very, very gratefully received.

The latest blogathon entry has been inspired by a Craig Brown - saint or sinner? debate that's been running on Twitter the last hour or so.

Come with me, if you will, to Tynecastle.

It's October 1998. Scotland are playing Estonia. And I'm in a purple faced fury.

Tom Boyd can barely find a man with a pass. When he does a section of the crowd applauds sarcastically. He turns, with that supercilious look he could have, and applauds right back at them.

It's a moment that inspires rage in a poor Scotland team. They look old and they look bereft of ideas. The manager doesn't seem to be doing much to change it.

Craig Brown's time was up and if I'd had the pace to get over the Tynecastle pitch I might almost have been annoyed enough to tell him that to his face.

But we came through. 3-2. It wasn't the world's best qualifying campaign but we made it to a play-off where we let Alan Shearer bully us and Paul Scholes orchestrate things at Hampden before turning a Wembley trip into another glorious failure.